REVIEW 



EBSTER'S SPEECH 



SLAVERY. 



BY WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

•i/ > _ 



<Si(' 



^ 

^^•/ 



BOSTON: 
PUBLISHED BY AMERICAN A. S. SOCIETY, 

21 CORNUILL. 

1850. 



J. n. YEREINTON- AND SON, nUNTERS, 
21 CORNHILL, BOSTON. 



R E V I E W . 



We propose to look at some points of Mr. Webster's late 
speech. 

' The best bid that has been made yet for the Presidency ' — 
' The shrewdest thing Daniel ever did.' Such are the comments 
of the street. For the present, let us not analyze motives^ or go 
deeper than the print ; but try the great Northern statesman by 
the record. If any one should aver that this Union can never be 
hurt by its enemies, who could safely gainsay him } since its 
friends seem resolved never to allow the chance, but to cut its 
throat themselves. We are Disunionists, not from any love for * 
separate Confederacies, or as ignorant of the thousand evils that 
spring from neighboring and quarrelsome States ; but we would 
get rid of this Union, because experience has shown it to be, in 
its character and construction, an insurmountable obstacle to the 
HARMOaNY of the nation ; and could we once 

• Cancel, and tear to pieces, this great bor.d 
Which keeps us pale ' 

with continual apprehensions, we should get space for such a 
structure as would insure the HAH.-coNy of all the races which 



« PHILLIPS REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

dwell on this continent, and all the States that control it — an em- 
pire ocean-bound on every side. With these views, Mr. Webster 
has no sympathy. Yet, in our opinion, of all Disunionists, Mr. 
Webster is the most efficient. His eulogy of the Union is not more 
eloquent than his policy is fatal to it. According to his own oft-re- 
peated confession, there exists an evil in our midst so serious that 
it clouds the whole future of our destiny. He has admitted that 
the to-come is so dark, he cares not to attempt to penetrate the 
clouds that overshadow it. Yet for twenty years the great states- 
man has been oftener ' checked for silence, than rated for speech.' 
Now, however, in the very crisis of our fate, he opens his mouth 
— 'I have wished only to speak my sentiments, fully and at large, 
being desirous, once for all, to let the Senate know, and to let the 
country know, the opinions and sentiments which I entertain on 
all these subjects ; to disburden my conscience from the bottom 
of my heart, and to make known every political sentiment that 
therein exists.' Having got to the ' bottom of his heart,' what 
do we find there > He ' expresses no opinion as to the mode of 
the extinguishment or amelioration of slavery,' ' has nothing to 
propose on that subject ! ' And this is statesmanship ! Yes, of the 
kind Coleridge describes : — ' There are men who never exert 
themselves to cure an evil, but seek merely to hold it at arm's 
length, careful only that things may last out their day,' 

The body politic is affected with a sore disease ; if allowed to 
have its way, no one can prophesy the result. But there is hope 
that, if taken in time, before it has tainted the whole system, 
and while the nation lies with submissive confidence in the hands 
of its statesmen-doctors, the strength of a good Constitution will 
carry the patient through. The great Doctor has spoken ; and 
what does he say } O ! nothing about the patient. He has dis- 
covered that the disease is not contagious ! — there is no danger 
of its spreading ! But as for the sufferer, he ' has nothing to pro- 
pose ' ! And then, laying his hand where his heart ought to be, 
he assures us that he has ' disburdened it from the very bottom,' 



Phillips' review of webster. 5 

and told ' every sentiment that exists there ' ! Excellent physi- 
cian ! ' ! how much blacker art thou than thy looks ! ' 

Yes, take slavery as it is, staggered by the sentiment of the 
civilized world arrayed against it, confined within uneasy limits, 
uncertain of the future, and with the great chiefs, Calhoun, Ben- 
ton, Clay, Webster, whom the land still trusts, on the stage, and 
possibly the difficult question of its abolition could be solved 
without danger to the Union. But Mr. Webster knows that out 
of all such crises as this, slavery has always, hy the sagacity of 
her leaders, the supineness of the North, and the chances of the 
times, come forth strengthened and triumphant. Seemingly cor- ' 
nered, she has leaped over our heads, only to get a freer field 
and give more fatal blows. From the seeming death of 1787, 
which deluded our fathers, she was resuscitated by Cotton and ** 
the Compromises. Afterwards, smothered by the too close em- ^ 
brace of the Mississippi, the Louisiana Territory came to her 
relief, with new lands for her to wear out, and a market for the 
slave-breeders of Virginia and the Carolinas ; and when even 
all this would not do, and Dr. John Randolph thought her 
end to be near, came Texas, with the elixir of perpetual youth .^ 
Yes, through the ' infernal doors ' of Compromise, which the 
Constitution 

• Opened, but to shut 
Excelled her power,' 

' Under spread ensigns marching,' has the South found always ' a 
broad and beaten way ' to her wishes, and ample means to ' tempt 
or punish ' refractory statesmen. 

The true friend of the Union would seize this moment, when 
the slave-host sways to and fro with anxiety ; when, thanks to 
the slandered abolitionists only, all of virtue the North has is 
aroused to the importance of the issue, and needs but a man as 
leader to dare and do all for Liberty — the true friend of the 
Union would seize such a moment, by some grand and compre- 
1* 



6 PHILLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

hensive plan of abolition, to insure the future, instead of shutting 
his eyes like the ostrich, and imagining that to be hoodwinked is to 
be safe. If, in some future struggle, Slavery, gathering its hosts 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, ' fleshed with conquests,' shall 
do equal battle with this Union, and destroy it, its epitaph will 
be — ' Died, because its friends dared not, or were too selfish, 
to look danger in the face, and " scotched the snake, not 
killed it."' 

' Let them care that come behind,' is the motto of the Great 
Defender of the Constitution. ' Instant in season and out of 
season' — ' Dehnda est Carthago ' — are ours. It is idle to im- 
agine that any ingenuity can compromise this question. It is no 
quarrel of lovers, but a thorough contrariety of interests; no 
mere friction of the political machine, but an entire misfit of its 
parts. The South, the present South, is fixed that the experi- 
ment shall be tried of extending slavery. The North caimot be 
said to be fully resolved, but it is deeply interested that slavery 
shall cease ; and this deep interest will soon issue in a most 
sturdy resolution. The battle must be fought. If joined now, 
'' it may be fought within the lists of the Constitution. But if the 
combatants grow heated and angered, and the hosts increase for 
another fifty years, who shall say that their first onset will not 
y rend the bond asunder, never to be again united ? 

One thing more. This speech contains, Mr. Webster tells us, 
all he has to say ' on these subjects.' His whole ' conscience is 
disburdened.' If so, then throughout a long and labored argu- 
ment, embracing a sketch of slavery from the beginning of the 
world, and a statement of the views taken of it by many other 
nations as well as by our own, not only has the great Northern 
statesman found no place for a plan to abolish it, but he has not 
been betrayed into the hint even of a wish that it may ever cease. 
/ Not one expression of pity for an enslaved race, not one indig- 
nant denunciation of the system, has a decent respect even for 
the opinions of mankind won from this political prater ! He de- 



PHILLIPS REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 7 

scribes, with as many moral bows as Sir Pertinax McSycophant 
himself could have made, the ' conscientious opinions of the 
South ' on the question of selling one's neighbors, and then de- 
scribes the religious scruples of the North, but all with such 
judicial coldness, such wary and decorous impartiality between 
Liberty and Despotism, between Right and Wrong, that it would 
puzzle a jury of Philadelphia lawyers to tell, had Nature given 
him a heart, to which side it would have leaned. So obedient 
are the pulses of this great man to his — duty or — his interest, 
that over the eggs of such a controversy as this, happier than 
Erasmus, he has walked without breaking them ; and may 
safely boast that Daniel Webster has spoken three hours on "' 
slavery, and no mortal man can tell whether he loves or hates it. / 
In the Roman procession, the most marked matter was that 
Cato's statue was wanting. Of this speech, what it fails to ex- 
press is more remarkable than what it has expressed — and 
that is saying a great deal. 

Certainly, if this cold, tame, passionless, politic commodity be 
all our great man's ' conscience ' has to say on American slavery 
— 'the vilest the sun ever saw,' according to the great Methodist, 
whose sect the republican statesman found time to praise, when 
too much pressed yb?' space, probably, to speak of such a trifle as 
' stealing a man and selling him ! ' — if this be all his conscience, 
why, then, as Launcelot says, ' 'tis but a kind of hard conscience,' 
after all ; though had it cried to him as Launcelot's did, \Budge 
not ' from the Proviso,' ' Scoi'n rmining toith thy heels ' from all 
thy recorded principles, it would have served a good purpose, 
notwithstanding. 

The first point of Mr. Webster's argument is, that Texas and 
all Texan territory are inevitably pledged to slavery by the terms 
of the Annexation Resolutions, which, being in the nature of a 
contract, cannot be broken without a breach of national faith. 
These allow Texas to be carved into, at least, five States, to be 
slave or free States, as each shall choose. 



8 Phillips' review of webster. 

To this argument \vc answer, — The annexation of Texas was, 
both in form and substance, confessedly, a gross breach of the 
Constitution. The Government has no power to unite the Union 
to foreign States. But if this can be done, it must be done by 
treaty, which requires a vole of two-thirds of the Senate to ratify 
it. Texas was annexed by Resolutions of both branches, and by 
small majorities. By these, the form of a contract was given to 
it, the more strongly to engage the national faith, and prevent 
what was, in reality, merely a law, from being, as it might other- 
wise have been, repealed by a subsequent one ; and Texas, 
brought in by one Congress, put out by its successor. 

We contend that the fact of Texan annexation is fairly divisi- 
ble into two parts; 1st, the annexation of a foreign State; 2d, 
certain agreements as to its being, on a future occasion, divided 
into five States. 

The consent of Congress is necessary to the formation of new 
States within the limits of an old one. This consent is usually 
wiven, upon deliberation, at the time of such contemplated divi- 
sion. Here was an attempt to give this consent beforehand, and 
thus bind the action of all future Congresses ; not leaving this 
(Treat boon to the South, of five Texan slave States, with ten 
Senators, to the chance of defeat from the whirligig of time, and 
the growth of anti-slavery sentiment. The whole thing, from 
beginning to end, in form and substance, was a trick, a gross 
breach of the Constitution. Now, what is to give it validity ? 
In the case of the acquisition of Louisiana, which was made ac- 
cording to the forms of the Constitution, though in violation, as 
many thought, and Jcficrson, then President, allowed, of its 
real intention and essence, it has been generally held that the 
unconstitutional act became valid solely by the acquiescence of 
the whole people. See Adams's Texas speech, p. 86. Address 
of the Faneuil Hall Texas Convention, dictated [this part) by Mr. 
Webster. Louisiana was annexed by treaty, which is, of course, 
a contract even more strictly than the Texas Resolutions. 



Phillips' review of webstek. 9 

In these last, therefore, where the Constitution has been vio- 
lated both in form and substance, it is still more plain that 
nothing but the acquiescence of the nation can make them valid. 
How is it to be discovered whether the people acquiesce or not? 
By their actions ; and let it be always remembered that we, 

THE INJURED MINORITY, HAVE A RIGHT TO CLAIM THAT OUR EN- 
FORCED SUBMISSION SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED AS ACQUIESCENCE 
ONE JOT OR IOTA BEYOND THAT PORTION OF THE WICKED CON- 
TRACT TO WHICH WE HAVE BEEN COMPELLED TO SUCCUMB. Tcxas 

is in, her Senators are seated in the Capitol, her ports are cov- 
ered by our flag, her votes sport with interests of New Eng- 
land. In so much New England has acquiesced, so far she is in 
honor bound. Pro tanto, as the lawyers say of a will or a deed, 
or an agreement, half good and half void, pro tanto (for such 
part, for so much,) the contract has been made valid by acquies- 
cence. But the friends of Texas attempted, in their fraudulent 
contract, to secure to her and themselves certain other privileges 
— to wit, cutting her up, and getting ten slave votes in the Sen- 
ate. She has taken the first step, that is, entered the nation — 
we have acquiesced — so much is hers. Let her try the second 
step, erect a new State within her limits, apply for admission ; 
and see whether we will acquiesce in that, too. We claim that 
the Anti-annexationists have a right to try that question ; to that 
no national honor is pledged. The question is open. When 
pliant Websters and traitor Winthrops again betray their constitu- 
ents, acquiesce in this part of the bargain, and escape cashiering, 
then, and not till then, will that part have gained validity. 

Suppose Congress, by joint resolution, should annex Cuba, and 
insert in the bargain a clause that on every question of a treaty, 
the Cuban Senators' votes should count double the vote of any 
New England Senator. Suppose, in pursuance of these resolu- 
tions, Cuba takes her seat in Congress. So far the traitorous 
bargain is made valid. After a year or so, the question of rati- 
fying a treaty comes before the Senate — is New England 



10 PHILLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

debarred by honor, or aught else, from resisting the other part of 
the fraud ; and if she can get enough to vote with her, showing 
the South, Cuba and the world, that so far the trick has failed, 
and has not been made valid by acquiescence ? The unconsti- 
tutionality of Texan annexation is cured by submission. Well, 
can we submit to that which has never taken place ? When 
Texas tries to divide herself into five States, and asks admission, 
then shall we be able to say whether the nation, represented by 
its Congress, acquiesces in that part of the bargain. But, an ob- 
jector says, then Texas and her friends cannot tell, for a long 
time, what her rights in this respect are. True, and tlnit is the 
misfortune of those who venture their fate on such questionable 
proceedings as need the acquiescence of others in order to be of 
any binding efiicacy. Certainly, if the tramplers on the Consti- 
tution have to wait long before they know whether they have 
succeeded in their fraud, it is no fault of ours. 

Again, the objector may urge, a bargain is a bargain — it fails 
entirely, or stands in all its parts. True ; that is the case when 
each party understands and freely assents to it. But when one 
knocks the other down, and infers his assent from his silence and 
his conduct, the injured party has a right to claim that his 
silence and submission shall not be construed into an assent one 
jot further than it must inevitably be so interpreted : and if, when 
he gets his mouth open, any thing yet remains to be assented to, 
against that he may with honor protest, and resist it to the utmost 
of his power. If this be not sound, constitutional, and honorable 
doctrine, then a temporary majority in Congress may, by adroitly 
tacking to some not unpopular measure a list of future agree- 
ments, claim from the acquiescence to, and hence the constitu- 
tionality of, the first — the acquiescence to and constitutionality 
of the whole, and debar all honorable actors under the Constitu- 
tion from all future resistance when the cases occur. 

A man enters your houde, knocks you down, takes your watch, 
and makes you promise to give him a hundred dollars the next 



■PHILLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 11 

morning. The morning comes, he presents himself, and claims the 
performance of your promise. Are you bound in honor to fulfil 
it ? The friends of Texas, in utter defiance of our constitutional 
rights, force her upon us, and promise for us, that when she 
wants other favors, we will tender them. When the time comes, 
we will see how far we are inclined to acquiesce and honor their 
bills. 

It appears to us that the fact of Texan annexation may thus 
fairly be divided ; and as in favor of the Constitution, Right and 
Liberty, we are justified in going to extreme limits, and to claim 
that if the ' scale do turn but in the estimation of a hair,' on our 
side, the verdict shall be ours ; and as, Mr. Webster himself 
being judge, at Springfield, ' we are to use the first and last and 
every occasion which offers to oppose the extension of the slave 
power,' we claim that he wield over Texas also ' his own thun- 
der,' the Wilmot Proviso. 

Pompously protesting as the Whigs, with Webster at their I 
head, did, that the whole of Texas annexation was unconstitu- 
tional, no one of them ever acted as if he believed it. The 
true course would have been, when Texan Senators and Repre- 
sentatives appeared at W'ashington, to dispute their right to take 
their seats. If voted down, protest, and warn Texas and the 
world that each future step towards ratifying or carrying out the 
iniquitous bargain would be resisted, and that her friends would 
have to fight their way to the validity of their contracts over an 
acquiescence which would be refused and disputed at every step. 
This should have been done ; men in earnest in their love of 
liberty would so have acted. But its omission works no harm to 
the people's right still to resist. The assent of the people is what 
is needed, not the assent of members of Congress. Members of 
Congress are not sent to Washington to give their assent to un- 
constitutional laws or treaties. When they do so, they go beyond 
their province ; and though, if the people omit to rebuke or 
cashier them, such omission will be taken as proof of acquies- 



12 PniLLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

cence in what they have done ; it can be rightly so interpreted 
only to the extent that such act of theirs necessarily, and inev- 
itably, and unequivocally goes, and no further. Mr. Webster, in 
the Texas Address, claims even beyond this ; he says — 

« It is idle lo say that the assci.t of tl e people of a State, in a great 
ai d fundamental question like this, is to be proved by, or inferred from, 
any vote of its Kcinccntativcs in Congress. No member of Congress is 
sent there for that purpose, or clothed with any such authority.' 

Let it be remembered, that assent to an unconstitutional pro- 
ceeding is never to be presumed : it is to be proved : and the 
burden of proof rests on the offending, that is, in this case, the 
slave party. It is clear the greet fact of Texan annexation 
admits of such a division as we have suggested. If it admits of 
division, then, in behalf of liberty and the ConstHution, the lovers 
of both are hound to make it. In such a case, even a technical 
objection mounts to the dignity of an argument. While con- 
tending for such glorious rights as Liberty and Justice, we are to 
yield only inch by inch. In their behalf, we may honorably 
' cavil (with Hotspur) on the ninth part of a hair.' To fight 
the battle of right against wrong within the girth of such a Con- 
ititution as ours is hard enough, especially when Slavery lays its 
plans and deals its blows wholly unshackled by any regard to con- 
stitutional resliictions; and resistance, according to Mr. Webster, 
is to be made by men fettered and chained by a most conscien- 
tious awe for all its provisions. Such a struggle hardly deserves 
the name of fight. It is simply beitig baited, like a bear muzzled 
and chained, while his assailants are free and armed. The 
Dutch dykes which usually keep out the ocean, whence once the 
inundation has passed over, only make the matter worse by 
restraining the waters' retreat. Let us jealously guard and 
scrupulously insist on every iota that is fairly ours, since there is 
no use of contending at all on the basis of such a faint-hearted 
and wholesale surrender as Mr. Webster's is ; according to whom, 



Phillips' review of webster. 13 

Despotism is to be allowed to do every thing illegally, and Lib- 
erty nothing at all, according to law! 

In conclusion : If the Texas annexation be a contract, or treaty, 
and our refusal to admit her five slave States be a breach of the 
contract, the remedy is in the hands of Texas. If we refuse to 
pay this, the rich price at which we bought the great favor and 
blessing of her joining us, the door is open ; she can retire, an- 
nul the contract, and all things then stand as before. No great 
harm is done, and she can have no good cause of complaint ; for 
Massachusetts was but speaking the voice of many free States 
when she placed on record her resolve, that she ' denies the va- 
lidity of any compromise whatsoever, that may have been, or 
that hereafter may he, entered into by persons in the government 
of the Union, intended io preclude the future application of such 
a condition [as Wilmot's] by the people acting through their rep- 
resentatives in the Congress of the United States.' 

Let us look a moment at Mr. Webster's personal sincerity in 
this Texas matter. In the Texas Address, which he dictated, in 
1845, Mr. Webster pronounced that act ' a plain violation of the 
Constitution, both in form and substance.' In 1848, at Marsh- 
field, he said, ' I take it that the most important event in our time, 
tending to the extension of slavery and its everlasting estab- 
lishment on this continent, was the annexation of Texas in 1845.' 
In 1847, at Springfield, he told us, ' We are to use the first, last, 
and every occasion which offers, to oppose the extension of the 
Slave Power.' On the 10th of August, 1848, after New Mexico 
and California were acquired, he said in the Senate : 

' My opposition to the increase of slavery in this country, or to the 
increase of slave representation, is general and universal. It has no 
reference to the lines of latitude or points of the compass. I shall 

OPPOSE ALL SrrCH EXTENSION AT ALL TIMES AND UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, 
EVEN AGAINST ALL INDUCEMENTS, AGAINST ALL SUPPOSED LIMITATION 
OF GREAT INTERESTS, AGAINST ALL C0MHINATI0NS, AGAINST ALL COMPRO- 
MISES.' 

2 



14 Phillips' review of webstee. 

Here, then, was a crisis worthy, himself being judge, of hi& 
utmost exertion. Dignus vindice nodus — a knot which justified 
the interference of a god. It was ' unconstitutional ' ; it was ' most 
important ' ; it tended to make slavery ' everlasting ' ; he felt 
pledged to oppose it every where and by all means. 

In view of all this, what and how much has Daniel Webster 
ever done to prevent the annexation ? And when, by the uncon- 
stitutional action of a temporary majority, the deed was in some 
sense attempted or done, what did he do to prevent its acquiring 
the validity of law.? 

He made a few speeches, one in particular, at Niblo's Garden, 
New York ; but when so mighty an injustice as this was in pro- 
gress, was it enough to speak merely } "When did he ever throw 
his dreaded gauntlet into the lists, and challenge every comer .? 
When did he ever put gallantly at hazard his name, fame and in- 
fluence, throw intrepidly into the scale of anti-Texas all that he 
had and all that he was ? Did he rally the country > Did he try 
to animate and marshal even the Whig party } Did he counsel a 
temporary suspension of attending to minor points, and a con- 
centration of the vigilance of the country on this, the The^mo- 
pylse and Gibraltar of the North } Did he summon the States, 
whose relative weight, as such, was being wickedly and illegally 
taken from them, to protest and exert themselves } For the ten 
years that the Texas project was afoot, he, and with some truth 
we may say, he alone, was competent to any or all of these 
things. But none of them did he attempt. In a great measure, 
his lukewarmncss and indifference were the one great obstacle in 
the way of any other Northern man's doing either of them. 

True, he got others to call a Convention, in 1845, in Faneuil 
Hall, and when he had felt the pulse of Boston, and found the 
meeting unpopular, he never came within its walls, but ran away 
to New York. He dictated the constitutional part of that Con- 
vention's Address, and then forbade them to divulge the fact ! 
How much in all this of ' high purpose and dauntless spirit' ? 



PniLLIPS"" REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 15 

But in December, 1845, while he sat in the Senate, ' the final 
law doing the deed of annexation ' was passed. He ' expressed 
his opinion,' he tells us, ' and recorded his vote in the negative, 
and there that vote stands ' ! And was that all ? He stood and 
saw his loved temple of Liberty fired, ' expressed his opinion, 
and voted against it ' ! He saw the Constitution violated — the 
balance of the States utterly destroyed — saw a deed accom- 
plished in attempting to portray the fatal consequence of which 
even his eloquence labors, and contented himself with a speech 
and a vote ! Does Mr. Webster mean to say, that if a majority in 
the Senate voted Maine out of that body, or established an order 
of nobles, he should content himself with an ' opinion and vote ' ? 
When a ruthless majority tramples on the form and sub- 
stance of the Constitution, of course there must be some con- 
stitutional way of opposing them, of preventing their acts acquir- 
ing validity. As a profound constitutional lawyer, Mr. Webster 
could not but know these ways and means of constitutional op- 
position. In such a crisis, he was bound to find or to make one. 
Did he attempt it ? Did he contest the right to their seats of men 
who appeared on that floor, under that ' plain violation of the 
Constitution ' ? He never opened his mouth ! Did he, like the 
Scottish chieftain of old, send the burnt cross throughout New 
England, and reminding her of what he had dictated, in 1845 — 
* It is idle to say that the assc7it of the people of a State, in a great 
and fundamental question like this, is to be proved by, or infer- 
red from, any vote of its representatives in Congress'! conjure 
Ihem to assemble in Convention, and swear never to ratify by 
acquiescence this act ' which tended to make slavery everlasting 
on the continent' ? Nothing of the kind. 

Did he, if he thought it too late to undertake this, place on solemn 
record at Washington, and add his influence to, the ' denial ' of 
the Massachusetts Legislature of the validity ' of any compro- 
mise, intended to preclude the future application of such a condi- 
tion ' [as Wilmot's] ? 



16 Phillips' review of webster. 

Instead of this, he assures Mr. Bell, of Tennessee, (page 18,) 
that ' he knows no form of legislation which can strengthen' this 
' plain violation of the Constitution ' — 'no recognition that can 
add a tittle of weight to it ' ! ' Any additional recognition would 
weaken the force of it' — 'Government is pledged by law and 
contract.' (p. 26.) And he surrenders, gives up the game, prom- 
ises to quintuple the weight of Texas when asked. Is this 
what he calls using ' the first, last, and every occasion to resist 
the slave power ' .? — is this opposition ' at all times, under all cir- 
rumstances, against all inducements, against all compromises ' .'' 
Daniel Webster has spoken some and well against Texas. He has 
yet to do the first act to resist her annexation, or prevent the fatal 
effects of that measure. His present position either confesses 
that his boasted Constitution is all a sham, so weak that it leaves 
its friends no means of resisting the unconstitutional acts of a 
ruthless majority, or that his whole opposition to Texas, judged 
by his public acts, was a sham. 

The next point in Mr. "Webster's speech is, his entire surrender 
of the Wilmot Proviso, so far as any territory at present be- 
longing to the country is concerned, on the ground of its being 
utterly unnecessary. As to California and New Mexico, he holds 
slavery to be excluded from those territories by the law of nature 
and physical geography — ' 1 will not take pains to re-afiirm an 
ordinance of nature, or re-enact the will of God — vyould not 
wound even the irrational pride of the South.' pp. 23, 24. He 
confesses his repeated and most solemn pledges to the principle 
of the Proviso, and promises to stand by them when shown to 
be necessary. 

This sudden, and for his official prospects most opportune, dis- 
covery of the usclessness of the Proviso, wears a most suspi- 
cious face. Mr. Webster doubtless remembers the pregnant 
commentary on Strafford's taking sides with Charles I. : — 
' There are some changes of opinion so suspicious, that it needs 
a life of most unequivocal sincerity ever after to convince man- 
kind that they were the results of honest conviction.' 



PHILLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. ^'^ 

But we beg the reader to remember that they were not shiiply 
pZe^^^es which Mr. Webster gave at Springfield and elsewhere to 
thcWilmot Proviso. He used his and the Whigs' professed 
attachment to this Proviso as an argument throughout the whole 
Presidential campaign to undervalue the Free Soil movement as 
unnecessary— to defeat Cass,— a man now shown to be as 
sound as himself, to all practicable purposes, on this question,— 
and to elect Taylor ; and unless he can convince the community 
that he has got new light on the character of ' nature and physi- 
cal geography' in New Mexico, &c., since September, 1847, and 
September, 1848, he stands before the world convicted out of his 
own mouth of having swindled those who trusted him out of 
their confidence and votes by false pretences. 

Listen to him at Springfield, September, 1847 : — 

a am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet; but if I were to 
prophesy, the very List subject on which I would venture a prediction 
would be the course of the Northern Democracy on this subject of sla- 
very extension. The prediction of the Almanac respecting the state 
of the weather would be just as reliable as any I could make of their 
probable proceedings. I hope there are some among them, and I am 
glad to believe there are many of them, who would go with us in support 
of the sentiment of the Wilmot Proviso ; but when we come to the real 
question, the vote, who and how many can we rely on to support us ? 
. It ^vas scouted out of the assemblage of the Democracy of Massa- 
chusetts at Worcester. Are we quite certain the Democratic members 
of Congress from Maine and New Hampshire will abandon the adminis- 
tration,°and support the Proviso against the Slave Power ? ' 

Again at Marshfield, September, 1848 : — 

•And now I venture to say, gentlemen, two things: the first well 
known to you, that Gen. Cass is in favor of what is called the Compro- 
mise Line ; and is of opinion that the Wilmot Proviso, or the Ordinance of 
1787 which excludes slavery from territories, ought not to be appUed to 
territories lying south of 36 deg. 30 min. He announced this before he 
^vas nominated, and if he had not announced it, he would have been 
thirty-six degrees thirty minutes farther off from being nominated. In 
2* 



18 PHILLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

the next place, he -will do all he can to establish that compromise line ; 
and lastly, which is a matter of opinion, in my conscientious belief, he 
■will establish it. 

• I verily believe, that unless there is a renewed strength, an augmented 
strength of "Whig votes in Congress, he will accomplish his purpose.' 

' Augmented strength of Whig votes ' ! How many Whig 
votes, his own and R. C. Winthrop's, for instance, will it take to 
support the Proviso ? Like the Scotchman's acres, the more you 
have of them, the poorer you will be. 

We turn aside a moment to remark, that it was in this speech 
at Marshfield that Mr. Webster confessed, what the abolitionists 
have so often asserted — 

' We talk of the North. There has been no North. I think the 
North Star is at last discovered ; I think there will be a North : but up to 
the recent session of Congress, there has been no North. What I mean 
to say is, if I am to understand a geographical section of the country, in 
which there has been a strong, conscientious, and united opposition to 
slavery, no such North has existed.' 

And if ' no such North has existed,' at whose door lies the 
fault ? We say plainly, at his ; ' one blast upon whose bugle 
horn, any time these twenty years, had been worth a thousand 
men.' His fiat could at any moment have called this new world 
into existence. His influence against it has been one of the great- 
est obstacles to its creation. When Wellington taunts Canning, 
that he did not earlier emancipate the Catholics — when Peel 
taunts Cobdcn, that the Corn laws were not sooner repealed — 
when Benedict Arnold taunts Washington, that the Colonies did not 
sooner triumph ; then, at their side, let Webster taunt the North 
for want of strength, energy and unanimity in its opposition to 
slavery ; he, whose boast has been, who has claimed it as a merit 
with his Southern friends, that he never introduced the question 
in any shape into Congress. 

* The North Star is at last discovered.' Who told him so ? 



Phillips' review of webstee. 



19 



For only by report could he know it, having had no hand in the 
grand discovery. Let him modestly betake himself to the com- 
pany of Harry the Fifth's 

' Gentlemen in England, now a-bed 
Who hold their manhood cheap when any speaks 
Who fought with us upon ' 

that glorious forlorn hope, the North against the South, in the 
slave's cause. 

But let us look at the statement itself, that the Wilmot Proviso 
is unnecessary for New Mexico and California. 

1. This was the same argument so commonly used in 1844 to 
smooth the way for Texan annexation — ' It never can be a slave 
country — naturally unfit for it,' &c. &c. Upon this slaveholders 
and dough-faces were perpetually harping. We hear nothing of 
it, now Texas is safely in the Union. Here is one first reason 
for looking upon such statements as suspicious. It is hardly re- 
spectful to hope to catch the world with the same kind of chaff. 

2. What does Mr. Webster know about this vast region, this 
undiscovered country from which so few travellers have re- 
turned .? so immense, 'a bird cannot fly over it in a week'! 
He 'supposes' there is no slave of the real American type 
(observe, when he wants the worst kind of slavery, he has 
to exemplify it as it exists among American Christians!) in 
California. He supposes ! Ah, earnest men want more than a 
politician's 'suppose' for a surety against injustice and wrong. 
He ' understands ' ' that peonism, a sort of penal servitude, or 
rather, a sort of voluntary sale of a man and his offspring, 
for debt, exists in some part of California and New Mexico.' 

Peonism ! what a pretty name ! ' A lie may keep its throne 
a whole age longer, if it shall skulk behind the shield of some 
fair seeming name.' Voluntary sale of a man's offspring for 
his debt ! a trifle ! not slavery, in the Websterian sense ! The 
Roman jurists called it so, (see page 9,) but they were pagans. 



20 Phillips' review of webster. 

"We will not quarrel on a name ; but while fathers sell their chil- 
dren, for indefinite periods, use boys and girls as a basis of the 
currency, if Mr. Webster ' cannot take the pains to re-affirm the 
ordinance of Nature and re-enact the will of God,'* or even the 



* ' This law, moreover, must have been enacted by the Creator since 
1824, or its operation must have been previously suspended in deference 
to the Spanish government; for under that government, negro slavery 
did exist in New Mexico and California, and it ceased in 182-t, not by 
the laxv of " physical geography," but by a Mexican edict. Thousands of 
slaves are employed in the mines of Brazil, and Mr. Webster does not 
explain how his law forbids their employment in the mines of Califor- 
nia. Mr. Webster ridicules the application of the proviso to Canada, in 
case of annexation. I neither see nor feci the point of liis wit — slavery 
is already prohibited by the local law of Canada, hut were it not, most 
certainly it ought to be prohibited as a condition of annexation. New 
York adjoins Canada, and Mr. Webster probably regards the prohibition 
of slavery in our recent constitution as the height of absurdity. In 1790, 
there were 21,000 slaves in New York, and on the 4th of July, 1827, 
about 10,000 slaves were emancipated, not by Mr. AVebstcr's law, but by 
act of the Legislature, and the number would have been much great- 
er, had not laws for their gradual emancipation been in operation since 
1796. For a long period, slavery flourished in New York undisturbed 
by abolitionists. The absence of all anti-slavery agitation was as perfect 
as Mr. Webster's heart could desire. Stray negroes were caught -with 
almost as much case as stray pigs. Neither pulpit nor press ruffled the 
happy serenity of the slaveholders. But this blissful repose was sudden- 
ly broken in 1741, by rumors of an inlended insurrection. Courts and 
executioners were immediately put into requisition, and in pursuance of 
judical sentences, thirteen slaves were burnt alive at the stake in the city of 
Neio York, eighteen were hanged, and seventy-one were exported to for- 
eign markets.' — Jay's Letter. 

*Mr. Webster supported, as has bcensern, the Oregon bill, with a pro- 
hibition of slavery, although no portion of it falls below forty-two degrees 
of north latitude. The territory acquired from Mexico, on the other 
hand, extends from that parallel south to the 32d — the latitude of Sa- 
vannah. And it is deserving of particular notice, that these territories 



Phillips' review of webster. 21 

ordinance of 1787, for such a country, we would be exceedingly 
obliged to him if he would come quietly home, and give place to 
some more active man, who has a microscopic eye for such 
trifles. 

Seriously, we hold that in this confession, Mr. Webster surren- 
ders his whole ground. Any 'servitude other than for crime of 
which the party has been duly convicted ' was hateful to the men 
of 1787, and ought to be to those of 1850. It is the great 
Saxon race that goes forth to take possession of this noble inher- 



had been ah'cady acquired when Mr. "Webster pronounced himself against 
slavery " irrespective of lines and points of latitude," and " against any 
compromise of the question." When Mr. Webster voted for a prohibi- 
tion of slavery in Oregon, and in the very territory he now refuses to re- 
strict, he could not have studied, with his accustomed severity of appli- 
cation, " the law of the formation of the earth." Indeed, it may be fairly 
questioned whether, at that period, he had even commenced his research- 
es in " physical geography." 

' On the 28th of February, 1849, M'hile the question of providing gov- 
ernments for the territories acquired from Mexico was under discussion, 
Mr. Dix said : — 

' " Slaves have been carried, and always will be carried, wherever they 
are not prohibited. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, are in the same 
range of States. The fortieth parallel of latitude divides them all. The 
influence of soil and climate are much the same in each. From the first 
three, slavery has been excluded by the ordinance of 1787. The last has 
been overrun with slavery lor want of a prohibition." 

' In the same speech, he referred to a fact which fully sustains his posi- 
tion. After the adoption of the ordinance of 1787, prohibiting slavery 
in the territory northwest of the Ohio, the inhabitants of that portion of 
it which now conslitutes the States of Indiana and Illinois, repeatedly pe- 
titioned Congress to suspend the operation of the ordinance, and allow 
them to introduce slaves from the States. It is hardly necessary to add, 
that these applications were steadily refused. In every instance, in the 
first settlement of a State, in which the question of slavery has been left 
to be determined by natural causes, human cupidity has proved too strong 
for Mr. Webster's law of physical geography.' — New York Evening Post. 



22 PHILLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

itancc. True to the glorious Ordinance, let us cut up, root and 
branch, all the vile institutions of other races, even if they be 
not quite so atrocious as our own pet sin at home. 

But slavery is as impossible in New Mexico as in Canada, says 
Mr. Webster. Where's the proof .^ How little we know of 
those countries is evident from this very speech ; for he tells us 
that the discovery of California gold mines was laughed at, only 
two years ago, as an id'e tale ; yet that coast had been visited 
and settled for many years. Who, when the liberty of a race 
hangs on a decision, will after that undertake to hazard any thing 
on the accuracy or sufficiency of our knowledge of the almost 
untrodden regions that lie south and east of California ? What 
man vain and hard-hearted enough to risk a great question like 
this on the tales of a few travellers, who have now and then lost 
themselves in that region, so immense that, as Neal once said, all 
the nations of Europe might be hidden there from each other ? 

The Texan plot just achieved, which commenced with the 
same song, and resulted in such strength and extension of slave- 
ry, surely we may rightly suppose that the men who played 
that game are masters of their trade. What say they on 
this point ? Calhoun and all the South cling with frantic 
desperation to the right of carrying their slaves into this Terri- 
tory. The prestige of their late triumphant success goes before 
them. This is not the moment for Mr. Webster to boast either 
his statesmanship or his sagacity. He has just been outwitted. 
The last game of Texas has been played so well, we begin to 
respect at least the ability of the winners. Ne sutor ultra 
crepidam, which means here. Let Mr. Webster conjxne himself 
to shooting snipes at Marshficld. We want to know Calhoun's 
opinion on a slave question. It is prudent to watch the enemy's 
game. Mr. Calhoun, the arch-slaveholder, approves Mr. Web- ' 
ster's principle. He likes ' no artificial line ; ' he only wants 
slavery ' where it would naturally go.' That is enough for us. 
It is not only right but prudent to learn of the foe. 



PHILLIPS REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 23 

Slaver}- not possible in the California territory ! Why, then, 
did the late California Convention, of which sixteen members 
were from the South, ' with entire unanimity,' as he tell us, in- 
sert a prohibition against it ? They were 07i the spot, interested 
in the question, fully informed, and 16 out of 48 were from the 
South ; yet with entire unanimity, well knowing the storm at 
home, they took the pains to ' re-af!irm the ordinance of Nature 
and re-enact the will of God.' One fact is worth a dozen sys- 
tems. Among all the inquiries he made and books he read, 
(p. 26,) did Mr. Webster give its due weight to {his fact in mak- 
ing up his opinion on the ' physical geography ' of the neighbor- 
ing region to the South of this new State ? 

But ' physical geography,' forsooth ! Where has winter been 
grim enough to fright slavery away > In Russia > Where has 
labor been hard enough to tempt a man to work for himself, and 
make him hate to force another to work for him ? In mines ? 
How many mines of various kinds may yet be discovered in that 
country, to be wrought like the Indian and Brazilian, by slaves ? * 
One might as well undertake 'to prophesy,' to use Mr. Webster's 
words at Springfield, what Whig principles will be next fall, as 
to say what will be the character of the country or society in 
New Mexico and California fifty years hence : and he who, with 



*Tho Southern members of Congress, says the N. Y'. Evening Post, un- 
derstand this matter, and do not disguise their understanding of it. All 
they ask is the non-interference, for which Mr. AVebster has pronounced 
himself. On the 23d of Februarj% 1849, Mr. Foote, of Mississippi, said : 

'No one, acquainted with the vast mineral resources of California and 
New Mexico, and who is aware of the peculiar adaptedness of slavo-Iabof 
to the development of mineral treasures, can doubt for a moment, that 
were slaves introduced into California and New Mexico, for the purpose 
of being employed in the mining operations there in jjrogress, and here- 
after, perhaps, to be carried on to an extent conjectured by lew, their 
labor would result in the acquisition of pecuniary ])rohts not heretofore 
realized by the most successful cotton and sugar planters of the country.' 
— Appendix to Cong. Globe, p. 262. 



34 Phillips' review of webster. 

the recent unexpected and most marvellous developments as to 
gold mines there, undertakes such a task, deserves to have the 
world laugh at him. But the man or the statesman who will risk 
the liberty of human beings on such cobweb speculations, de- 
serves other rebuke than ridicule. His folly changes to crime. 

Even without mines, ' tillable land,' or cotton plantations, 
slavery might still exist in the house, and in many forms of 
domestic employment, as it did in New England previous to 
1780, and thus not only sacrifice the rights of some hundreds of 
thousands, which, however trifling they may appear to great 
statesmen, are worth taking pains for, even at the risk of ' wound- 
ing the irrational pride of slaveholders : ' but further still, such a 
state of society would inevitably throw that whole region, as the 
same cause does now throw Maryland and Delaware, into the 
slave ranks, and thus help the scale of Freedom to kick the 
beam on every trial. 

Mr. Webster says (page 8) in his revised speech, ' Slavery 
existed in the earliest periods of history in the Oriental nations.' 
What does he say on the 26th page ? ' California and New 
Mexico are ' — what ? ' Asiatic in their formation and scenery ! ' 
If they are so, what prevents slavery from existing there in 
the latest periods, as it did in the Oriental nations in the 
earliest .'' 

' There was slavery among the Greeks,' says Mr. Webster. 
What was Greece .'' ' Iron-bound and sterile,' says Edward 
Everett ; with an unproductive soil, importing her own corn. 
What is the description Mr. Webster gives of New Mexico .'' 
Such as Greece was, with her little mountain fastnesses, with 
' vast ridges of mountains of enormous height, broken ridges and 
deep valleys.' Slavery existed in Greece, without much ' tillable 
land,' without cotton or tobacco. Why cannot it exist in our 
mountains at the present day ? 

Suppose there be no ' tillable lands,' no cotton plantations, is 
slavery therefore impossible .? As we have before remarked, 



Phillips' review of webster. 25 

thrice has it heretofore been supposed in this country that slavery 
was on the point of ceasing. First, it was believed, in 1789, that the 
prohibition of the trade in 1808 would abolish it ; so Mr. Webster 
avows. Cotton came in, and that fond hope of our fathers 
pi-oved illusive. Randolph thought, thirty years ago, the system 
was dying ; and so the North deluded itself at the time of the 
Missouri Compromise. The intei'nal slave trade, and the open- 
ing of virgin lands in the southwest, saved it. Of late, half dead, 
and fearing the future, Texas came in to give it a new lease of 
life and vigor. So many times, one thing after another, un- 
dreamed of by the wise ones, has chanced to save it. The 
sagacity of its friends has been keener than that of a Pope of 
Rome to seize the tide at the flood, and guide it on to safety. 
•Outgeneralled' (it is Mr. Webster's alternative phrase) so often, 
shall we leave any thing to chance ? What did Massachusetts 
tell her representatives in 1849 ? ' To enforce the prohibition, to 
" the end that slavery may be perpetually excluded therefrom, 
beyond every chance and uncertainty.'''' ' ' Would you have a 
serpent sting you twice } ' No ! this time we '11 ' take a bond 
of fate, and make assurance doubly sure.' 

We look upon all Mr. Webster's pretended grounds for this sud- 
den change of position as made up for the occasion.* He is evl- 



* In 1819, Mr. Webster, as one of the Committee, submitted to a Ecs- 
ton meeting two resolutions, viz. : — ' That the Congress of the United 
States possess the constitutional power, \ipon the admission of any new 
State created beyond the limits of the original territory of the United 
States, to make the prohibition of the further extension of slavery or in- 
voluntary servitude in such new State a condition of its admission ; ' and 
that ' it is just and expedient that this power should be exercised by 
Congress upon the admission of all new States erected bej-ond the ori- 
ginal limits of the United States.' — Jay's Letteii. 

♦When Northern members of Congress voted for the Missouri Com- 
promise, against the known icill of their constituents, they were called 
3 



26 PHILLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

dently ill at ease, pleading a cause, not stating his real opinion. 
And it is strange that he should be ill at ease in such work, 
since, in our opinion, Mr. Webster has never been a statesman 
but once in his life, and that was in his conflict with Hayne. On 
ull other occasions, he has been, and has seemed to be, even in 
the Senate, a mere advocate — now of a tarifl", now of a bank, 
now of this great interest, now of that ; and if he was not feed 
for his arguments, he ought to have been, and seemed to ex- 
pect to be. 

His total surrender of what he so vain-gloriously called, at 
Springfield, ' his thunder,' and ' the Whig ground,' is flat apos- 
tacy, nothing else. Somewhere, in this speech, he finds fault 
with us as impatient — 'too impatient to wait for the slow pro- 
gress of moral causes in the improvement of mankind.' If from 
1847 to 1850 be a fair specimen of his snail-like progress back- 
ward, impatience is no great crime in any spectator. In the 
streets, they link his name with Arnold and such humble traitors ; 
but his crime is greater. Nothing, as has been well said by 
Charles Sumner, resembles it but the deliberate and calculating 
apostacy of Strafford. It is not, as in Arnold, the surrender of a 
fort, or the desertion of a single man. Here the proper, and by 



•* Doufh Faces." I am afraid, fellow citizens, that the generation ol 
" dough faces " will be as perpetual as the generation of men." — Web- 
ster at Marshfdd, 1848. 

There seem to be well grounded reasons for this fear ! For, in an- 
swer to a question from Mr. Webster, Mr. Hale said, in the Senate, March 
2,5, 1850 :— 

' The honorable Senator asks me why I did not vote to keep territory 
out ? I call upon the Senate to mark what I am about to say. A mo- 
tion was made by the Senator from Connecticut to insert in the treaty 
[of peace with Mexico] a provision keeping slavery out of the Avholc 
country that we should acquire, and upon that vote my name stands re- 
corded in favor of the proposition, and upon that vote the name of the 
honorable Senator from Massachusetts does not appear at all, although it 
appears that he was in the Senate five minutes before and live minutes 
after the vote was taken.' 



PHILLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 2ff 

some younglings the expected, leader of the North, not only 
leaves the camp, but sets himself, like Strafford, to corrupt with 
his glozing sophistry the consciences and hoodwink the eyes of 
his countrymen, yields up the safety of one race, and uses the 
influence, too generously given him, to mould the other into sup- 
ple and unconscious tools of a Despotism which he is all the 
while affecting to abhor. If Slavery sets her foot on the strand of 
the Pacific, let her thank our Stratford. Mirabeau was bought 
with gold, but Death took him before he could earn it ; Strafford 
with a peerage, but Puritanism winnowed him and his plots on 
its inexorable threshing-floor, the scaffold. There is a spirit 
awake at the North as inexorable as Puritanism or Death ; and 
now, as formerly, God gives to Liberty nothing but victories. 

Let no one suppose, from our lengthened criticism of the Wil- 
mot Proviso surrender, that we place any reliance on that Proviso 
as an efficient barrier against slavery. We recognize the utility, 
for various reasons, of contending for it ; but above all, we wish 
to criticise this speech, not as Disunionists, but from Mr. Web- 
ster's standpoint. 

We come next to Mr. Webster's admission of there being just 
grounds of Southern coixiplaint against the North. And here is 
another of those suspicious and sudden changes of opinion. 
How busy the distinguished gentleman must have been the last 
twelvemonth ! How much he has learned ! It is just a year 
since he dared Mr. Butler to bring against Massachusetts any 
charge of transgression of the Constitution, and proclaimed his 
readiness to defend her. Since then, either his valor has oozed 
away, or he has got melancholy information of the truth of Mr. 
Butler's charges ! 

As long ago as when he defended the Constitution against 
Hayne, in 1830, he said, ' I am resolved not to submit, in silence, 
to accusations either against myself individually, or against the 
North, wholly unfounded and unjust ; accusations which impute 
to us a disposition to evade the Constitutional Compact, and to 



28 PHILLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

extend the power of the Government over the internal laws 
and domestic condition of the Stales.' In March, 1850 — Eheii 
quanhim muiatus ah iUo ! — he has nothing to say on the subject ! 
except to accuse his constituents. 

The free States have never passed a law which their best 
lawyers did not deem consistent with the Constitution ; and the 
moment the Federal Court, most unexpectedly, in the Prigg case, 
announced a new view of the relations of the States to this ques- 
tion, they conformed their legislation exactly to its decision. 
Northern courts have, with a fidelity which we think cruel, car- 
ried out the edicts of the central Judiciary. Individuals, it is true, 
to their honor be it said, have (with here and there a few base 
exceptions, to which we now add the name of Daniel Webster) 
refused to 'bewray him that wandereth.' Yet against Courts 
and Legislatures, as well as private citizens, Mr. Webster en- 
dorses this wholesale slander, which lacks only truth to be a 
compliment. 

The only point in this part of the speech thai interests us, is 
the unutterable baseness of the slave hunt pledge. It is indeed 
true, as we have always argued, that all who swear to support 
the Constitution are bound not only to submit to the return of 
fugitive slaves, but to aid in it, if necessary. All honor to Mr. 
Webster's consistency on this point ; and as he exhibits none on 
any other, and very little here, we are the more scrupulous to 
pay him his due credit, to the uttermost farthing. The difference 
of conduct of different men on this point of surrendering fugitive 
slaves has been quite remarkable. Some, with Adams and 
Channing, cut the Gordian knot, by frankly declaring that, though 
sworn to the Constitution, this they will not do ; a course defen- 
sible neither in a court of law, nor one of morals. Others, with 
Giddings and his friends, evade the question, and, while admit- 
ting the general constitutional obligation, are very shy of telling 
us what they themselves would do in the matter. Thanks to 
Mr. Webster for liis plain, unvarnished villany. Villain, gentle 



PIULLIFS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. ^^' 

reader, is none too harsh a name for a man who professes his 
readiness to return fugitive slaves. Our glorious old tongue 
was made for use, not to be laid up in dictionaries. It is rich 
indeed in its capacity for rebuking sin, but alas ! the Saxon race 
far outdoes it in its capacity for sinning. 

Mr. Webster professes his entire readiness to carry out this 
provision of the Constitution. He is no common man, whose 
pledge will, like himself, be forgotten in a day. His name is to 
float down the tide of time. The 'terrible memory' of the 
abolitionists will fix side by side with that name on the 
page of history this shameful confession. If God permits him 
to Uve, he will have ample time to appreciate, as the world ad- 
vances, the foul blot he has ineffaceably made on the sun of his 
fame. It will be but a poor excuse for his biographer to urge 
that he squared his morality by the statute book of his time ! As 
< nice customs curtesy to great kings,' so truly great men, far 
more truly good ones, refuse to be » confined withm the weak 
list of a country's fashion.' Besides, he saw the truth clearly 
enoucrh when he got beyond the smoke of his own prejudices, 
and was looking at Kossuth, and not at a negro. Then he could 
summon to his side against Russia, ' the threatened indignation 
of the whole civilized world.' ' Let not any one imagine,' he 
said ' that mere force can subdue the general sentiment of man- 
kind Gentlemen, if the blood of Kossuth is taken by an abso- 
lute, unqualified, unjustifiable violation of national law, what will 
it appease- what will it pacify ? It will mingle with the earth 
_ it will mix with the waters of the ocean - the whole civilized 
world will snuff it in the air, and it will return with awful retri- 
bution on the heads of these violators of national law and justice. 
Put the name of Douglass, Brown, or Ellen Crafts in place of 
Kossuth, and we commend this fine sentiment to Mr. Webster s 
mature consideration. We ' appeal from Philip drunk to Ph.lip 
sober ' from Mr. Webster at Washington, with the gewgaws of 
office' tinkling in his ears, to Mr. Webster at home, counting on 
3* 



^ 



PHILLIPS REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 



that honorable fame, the approbation of good men in time to 
come ; or longing for that self-respect, so valued in one's last 
years, when, as Kent says, ' we begin to act more from a sense 
of duty, and less from any feeling of ambition.' Who can blame 
us for detesting that Moloch Constitution to which the fair fame 
of our statesman is sacrificed ! Is not the very weakest-minded 
Charity obliged to confess that its favorite has loved Liberty and 
Justice less, and idolized the parchment more ? 

But there is something further to be urged on this point. Full 
half of the viliany is volunteered, utterly gratuitous. Mr. Web- 
ster proclaims his readiness to support not only the Constitution, 
but the atrocious provisions of Mr. Mason's bill. This proposes 
to surrender any colored person claimed as a slave, without re- 
quiring any thing but pri7>ia facie evidence of his being so — 
admitting affidavits as well as oral testimony, thus wholly 
debarring the victim from any opportunity of cross-examining the 
witnesses against him — refuses jury trial, and allows any one of 
the forty thousand postmasters in the Union to authorize the 
transportation of an inhabitant of Massachusetts to New Orleans, 
to have it tried there, friendless, alone, and helpless as he will be, 
whether he was born in Massachusetts, or had escaped there ! * 
All these objectionable features might be removed, and yet the 
Constitution faithfully observed. There is nothing in the Consti- 
tutional provision which forbids the regulating of the whole pro- 
cess of slave surrender by all the jealous forms of habeas corpus, 
jury trial, &c., which the experience of ages shows to be indis- 
pensable for the protection of freemen who may be mistaken 
for slaves ; on the contrary, the Constitution, fairly interpreted, 



*The present fugitive slave bill, that of 1792, is justly liable to all 
tlie objections urged against Mason's bill, except that it commits the exe- 
cution of its provisions to persons of some standing and character, not to 
a mass of clerks and postmasters. 



PHILLIPS^ REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 31 

requires the observance of a trial by jury. Art. 8 of the Amend- 
ments says, ' In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy 
the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, &c.' 
Art. 9th continues, ' In suits at common law, where the value in 
controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury 
shall be preserved, &c.' When a fugitive slave is arrested, it is ei- 
ther a civil or a criminal case : it goes into one list or the other, and 
the Constitution, therefore, requires a jury trial. But if any one 
is hardy enough to deny that such a case is strictly either civil 
or criminal, still the spirit of the Constitution, as shown in the 
above extracts, would fairly claim a jury trial even in anom- 
alous cases. Without the slightest pretext of legal or con- 
stitutional obligation, therefore, without any reason in com- 
mon sense, Mr. Webster volunteers his support of all these 
thoughtless and cruel and dangerous regulations. Our fa- 
thers thought it high crime enough to put it into the Declara- 
tion of Independence, that George III. intended to transport 
the colonists to England for trial. To Hancock or Adams, Eng- 
land was next door, compared with the infinite and hopeless 
distance of New Orleans from Boston to any free colored man, 
whom this cruel and loose law has left to be mistakenly or ma- 
liciously carried there, to be melted into the indistinguishable 
mass of slaves, and have the question of his Massachusetts 
birth tried at some white claimant's leisure ! 

Where the owner finds lost or stolen property, there he is to 
prove his title. Such is the sound rule of the common law, and 
it ought to govern in these cases of fughive slaves. Suppose the 
claimant, under Mason's bill, either through malice or careless- 
ness, has taken the wrong person, taken a Massachusetts free- 
man : how shall the victim be righted } Why, it is said, by 
appealing to some court in New Orleans, when he arrives. But 
the colored people are generally poor. Suppose a colored man, 
never out of Boston in his life, is snatched away. How is he to 
get friends in New Orleans, where he never was before, to bring 



S8 PHILLIPS^ REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

his case before a tribunal ? Months may pass ere that, and 
meanwhile the poor, friendless one is melting fast into the indis- 
tinguishable mass of slaves, and may be sold and passed on from 
hand to hand, till redress is impossible. 

But if some humane person is found, and the case is at last in 
some Southern court, where every colored person is presumed to 
be a slave until he shows the contrary, — how then is the Boston 
boy to prove his Boston birth? We shall be told, let him send for 
his mother, father, brothers, uncles, playmates. Send ? It costs 
money. Send for their depositions, then ? Court street asks 
money to take them ; the man is poor. But suppose this obsta- 
cle also is surmounted. His friends have come to him, or sent 
their depositions. The laws of the South shut out all this testis 
mony ! A colored man must, of coui'se, prove his birth and 
residence by colored friends generally ; but no colored man can 
give evidence, in a Southern court, in any case where a white 
man is party. He must get white persons to swear to his past 
life, birth, &c., or he must sink down a slave. In nine hundred 
and ninety-nine cases, therefore, out of a thousand, the North- 
ern freeman, once mistakenly surrendered under Mason's bill, is 
lost for ever. And this is the bill which the Defender of the 
Constitution undertakes to support ! He knew, or should have 
known, that in Maiyland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Mis- 
souri, Alabama, and probably in all the slave States, any person 
claiming that he is wrongfully held as a slave may have injury 
trial. But the Massachusetts man mistakenly seized, in Boston, 
cannot have this old Saxon privilege ! He must be surrendered 
whenever any one office-underling is satisfied, on paper evidence, 
that the slave claimant is right. 

We mention these facts to show that Mr. Webster, when he 
surrenders one of his constituents to Mason's bill, suri-enders him 
to slavery. As long ago as 1827, kidnapping was common in 
Pennsylvania. They had only to catch a man, get him over the 
line, and mingle him among the slaves, and he could not be found 



Phillips' review of webster. 38 

again. It is probably still more common now along the border 
States. Mistakes too, where interest is on the side of successful 
error, must be common. 

Mr. Underwood, of Kentucky, tells us, that the right of trial 
by jury is inconsistent with slavery. In the life of that glorious 
Baptist missionary, Willia3I Knibb, it is said, that on one occa- 
sion, he and his coadjutors came to an agreement with the planters 
of Jamaica, that Slavery and Christianity could not exist together ; 
and there they parted. The planters said, ' We will exterminate 
Christianity ; ' the missionaries rejoined, ' We will abolish sla- 
very.' If the choice is to be made between jury trial and the 
convenience of slaveholders, which is to give way, the rights of 
freemen, or the convenience of slaveholders } 

If a horse be claimed from his owner at Marshfield, it is no 
insuperable objection to a jury trial, and the requiring of fair 
evidence of ownership on the part of a Southern claimant, that 
it will much delay the gentleman ! But let one of the chivalry 
claim a man, and the old barriers must down, lest he be com- 
pelled to tarry overlong, and be inconvenienced ! Does Mr. 
Webster remember his conclusive demonstration, years ago, tliat 
the simplest governments were the most despotic } and his en- 
treaty that our countrymen would be patient, and willing to give 
time and take trouble ; such was the only security for free insti- 
tutions ! The colored men of the North, whose rights he is 
jeopardizing, whose children cannot play in the streets with such 
laws over their heads, beg of him to ' reck his own reed,' and be 
as tender of liberty now. In 1834, he said : — 

• The spirit of liberty is, indeed, a bold and fearless spirit ; but it is 
also a sharp-sighted spirit ; it is a cautious, sagacious, discriminating, 
far-seeing intelligence ; it is jealous of encroachment, jealous of power, 
jealous of man. It demands checks, it seeks for guards, it insists on 
securities ; it entrenches itself behind strong defences, and fortifies, with 
all possible care, against the assaults of ambition and passion. It 
does not trust the amiable weakness of human nature, and therefore 



34 Phillips' revikw of wilbstek. 

it will not permit power to overstep its iircscribcd limits, though benev- 
olence, good intent <Tnd patriotic purpose come along with it. Neither 
does it satisfy itself with //a«/iy and temporary resistance to illcrjal authority. 
Far otherwise. It seeks for duration and permanence. It looks before 
and after ; and, building on the experience of ages which are past, it 
labors diligently for the benefit of ages to come. This is the nature of 
constitutional liberty ; and this is our liberty, if we will rightly under- 
stand and preserve it.' 

If his vote is ever given to this law, — which, after all, will not 
be worth the paper it is written on, thanks to the abolitionists, — 
let him no longer be painted, as in Harding's full length, in the 
grand repose of those majestic j)roportions, but running, at the 
head of forty thousand constitutional hounds, after some hapless 
fugitive ' guilty of a skin less colored than his own,' and from his 
mouth let there issue his own words in the Senate — 'The Con- 
stitution is beneficent, it has trodden down no man's liberty ' — 
' Have I not taken an oath to it on the Holy Evangelists of Al- 
mighty God ! ' — ' I put it to all conscientious men, all sober and 
sound minds, as a qu(!stion of morals and of conscience, what 
right they have, in their legislative capacity, or any other, to 
embarrass ! ! the free exercise of the rights secured by the Con- 
stitution to persons whose slaves escape from them .'' None at 
all ; none at all ; neither in the forum of conscience nor before 
the Constitution are they justified, in my opinion ! I am sure, if 
they consider their constitutional obligations, they will fulfil them 
with alacrity ! ! ' 

If in the lowest deep, there be a lower deep for profligate 
statesmen, let all former apostates stand aside and leave it vacant. 
' Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy com- 
ing. All the kings of the earth lie in glory, every one in his 
own house ; but thou art cast out of thy grave as an abominable 
branch, thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because 
thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people.' 

Of Mr. Webster's most non-committal (and unspoken) refer- 



Phillips' review of webster. '35 

ence to the imprisonment of Northern seamen in Southern ports, 
what need that we say any thing ? Not able, truthfully, to show 
one instance in which any Northern Legislature has refused any 
part of its duty in regard to fugitive slaves — and Clay himself 
having just confessed that no slaveholder had brought his case 
before a Northern court without obtaining just judgment and 
ample damages — he still includes Legislators in his general 
censure, and on the North's want of duty in refusing to surren- 
der slaves, he declaims majestically, all fire and energy, direct 
and unmisakcable ! Mark the dillerence when he speaks of 
the South, whose private chizens, courts and Legislatures arc 
all alike implicated in notorious, long continued, and often wan- 
ton, violations of the Constitution. Does he arraign Legislatures ? 
No ! Does he allude to laws ? Never ! Now, there stand 
upon their statute books, laws which they know are unconstitu- 
tional, making our seamen liable to be seized" and sold. These 
statutes they confess to be unconstitutional, because they forbid 
their being passed upon and tried by any Federal Court. Side 
by side with those statutes, Louisiana and South Carolina have 
enacted that if any person, from Massachusetts or elsewhere, 
enters those States to make up a case, and try the constitution- 
ality of these laws in the Supreme Court, he shall be punished 
by imprisonment in the common jail. Mr, Webster knew all 
this ; yet from nothing he says would the reader get any just 
idea of this whole range of Southern legislation, so confessedly 
unconstitutional, and which dares not meet the faces of the 
Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States. The differ- 
ence of manner and language in the two cases betrays the pur- 
pose of the speaker. When he is finding fault with the North, 
he gives frankly, ' my opinion,' ' I think,' ' wherever I go and 
whenever I speak,' and ' I say the South has been injured.' But 
of these many and cruel laws, he ventures no personal opinion, 
steps out of the responsibility, and only ventures, ' the North 
thinks such imprisonments unconstitutional, &c.' Southern 



36 Phillips' review of webster. 

men (lefyii)g the Constitution, killing freemen in unhealthy 
jails or chaining them in slave gangs, is ' irritating, inconve- 
nient ! seems impracticable and oppressive!' Of Mr. Hoar's 
' being kicked back,' in Curran's phrase, ' into the mass of 
his fellow-slaves,' he only finds time to print, not say, that 
' the effort was well intended.' Not a word in defence of 
Massachusetts when injured and insulted, vnconstitutionally. 
All his rhetoric having been spent in comforting Carolina for the 
Constitution's not having done for her all she thought it should, 
he has only a few tame adjectives left for the acknowledged and 
palpably unconstitutional wrongs of his own constituents ! Veri- 
ly, this is oratory ' in a monstrous little voice,' ' roaring as gently 
as any sucking dove.' * 

We care little for Mr. Webster's notion about State instruc- 
tions. But we may as well remark, in passing, that here is 
another of those suspicious changes of opinion, since very dif- 
ferent was the tone in which he spoke of ' one set of public 
servants giving instructions to another,' &c., in the well-known 
speech wherein he criticised President Jackson's protest against'a 
resolve of the Senate. Then he could see the ' Senate as repre- 
senting the States, and authorized to lift its voice against any thing 
derogatory to the rights of the States.' Then he could sneer at 



* In rcalitj', Mr. Webster did not utter even a syllable of this. His 
speech was published in the Intelligencer and Union without a line about 
the Northern seamen. But when he was about to send it North, he 
puts in six or eight lines on the subject. Ho saj-s, * This is not only 
irritating, (!) but exceedingly inconvenient in practice, (!) and seems 
altogether impracticable and oppressive.' (! !) The speech came to the 
people of the North in this seeming way ; and a great many of the 
Massachusetts newspapers spoke out against its poltroonery, and only 
one or two city papers supported him. What docs he say in his second 
' authorized edition ' ? ' Seems, madam ? nay, it is ! ' Now it no longer 
is inconvenient! or seems irritating, but ' is exceedingly imjustifiablc 
and oppressive.' Behold how wholesome is public rebuke ! 



riiiLLU'b'' REvaEw or websxer. 37 

one, in that Congress, seen to be instructed by his constituents, 
and ' refusing to obey, because he did not find on the list the 
majority of the party that elected him.' Then he could appro- • 
ciate and describe the character of a Representative on this wise, 
— (we ask Mr. G. S. Hillard's attention) — 

' We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a 
sentinel on the -watch-tower of liberty. Is he to be blind, though visible 
danger approaches ? Is he to be deaf, though sounds of peril fill the air ? 
Is he to be dumb, while a thousand duties impel him to raise the cry of 
alarm ? Is he not, rather, to catch the lowest whisper which breathes 
intention or purpose of encroachment on the public liberties, and to give 
his voice breath and utterance at the first appearance of danger ? Is not 
his eye to traverse the whole horizon, with the keen and eager vision of 
an unheeded hawk, detecting, through all its disguises, every enemy 
advancing, in any form, towards the citadel which he guards ? Sir, this 
•watchfulness for public liberty, this duty of foreseeing danger, and pro- 
claiming it, this promptitude and boldness in resisting attacks on the 
Constitution from any quarter, this defence of established landmarks, 
this fearless resistance of whatever would transcend or remove them, all 
belong to the representative character, are interwoven with its very 
nature, and of which it cannot be deprived without converting an active, 
intelligent and faithful agent of the people, into an unresisting and pas- 
sive instrument of power. A representative body which gives up these 
rights and duties, gives itself up. It has broken the tie between itself 
and its constituents, and henceforth is fit only to be regarded as an inert, 
self- sacrificed mass, from which all appropriate principle of vitality has 
departed for ever.' * 



* « He now pours contempt on legislative instructions, but on March 
1st, 1847, he presented to the Senate a series of resolutions in favor of 
the prohibition of slavery, passed by the Legislature of Massachusetts, 
and sent to her Senators and Representatives, and responded to the de- 
claration of the State in the following emphatic terms :— 

' «' I THANK her for it, and am proud of her, for she has denounced the 
■whole object for which our armies are now traversing the mountains of 
Mexico. ********* »^_ 
" If any thing is certain, it is that the sentiment of the whole North is 

4 



S8 rillLLll-'s REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

Abolition Societies Mr. Webster does ' not think useful ! ' He 
' thinks their operations the last twenty years have produced 
nothing good or valuable.' That they have produced this speech, 
does not, perhaps, in the opinion of many, disprove this assertion. 
Yet we think it does ; this speech will do more to open the eyes 
of the North to the rottenness of politicians, than almost any 
thing else could have done. We may, however, remind Mr. 
Webster that Congress has done nothing, this session, but just 
the work these despised Abolition Societies have set it ; that they 
have so wrought as to make the slave question, like Aaron's rod, 
swallow up all others on the political arena, — have made his, 
and .Clay's, and Benton's political life seem mere boy's play, 
compared with the struggle for life and death, which they are 
preparing to force on all sections of the nation ; that, prompted 
by the example, and sustained by the labors of such Societies, 
and gilded with their approbation, the last ten heroic years of 
Adams's life, as a mere Representative, not only eclipsed all the 
glory of his Diplomatic services, but blotting from popular 
recollection an odium such as no other public man ever encoun- 
tered, changing gall into sweetness, sent him to his grave covered 
with love, laments, and blessings, which any public man but 
Washington might envy. 

Nothing can exceed the tameness and pusillanimity with which 
Mr. Webster passes over the great and most just ground of 



utterly opposed to the aqquisition of territory to be formed into new 
slaveJwlding States."'— Cong. Globe, p. boo. 

' The resolutions, which drew from Mr. Webster this public tribute of 
thanks were, that the extension of slavery should be uniformly and eak- 
NESTLY OPPOSED bv all GOOD and PATRIOTIC mcu throughout the Union ; 
and a solemn protest against the acquisition of any additional territory, 
WITHOUT an EXPRESS PROVISION by Congress that there shall be neither 
SLAVERY nor INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE in such TERRITORY, otherwlsc than 
for the punishment of crime.' — .Y. 1'. Evening Post. 



Phillips' review of webster. 39 

Northern complaint, the unconstitutional acquisition of so much 
Southern territory since 1803, by which the whole character and 
destiny of this LTnion has been changed. * He has again and 
again recognized the inestimable importance of this, from the 
time he drew the Boston Missouri Memorial in 1819, to when he 
dictated part of the Boston Texas Address in 1845 ; yet now he 
quite sinks it out of sight; slurs it, though he calls it the ' first and 
gravest,' despatches it in twenty lines, and afterwards states that 
all these grievances can be ' redressed.' We should like much to 
know how he proposes to redress the downhill and disgraceful his- 
tory of the last twenty years, whenever this question of slavery 
has touched on national politics ? Can he blot out the sad record 
of Clay's mischievous compromises, or our slave-begging diplo- 
macy in almost every court of Europe ? Can he blot out his 
own coward silence on the floor of the Senate ? Can he even 
turn aside the dark shadow that is stealing over the mirror 
of the Republic, if slavery ever gets footing in the boundless 
West ? 

The last point we shall touch on is the proposal to colonize the 
free blacks. And here again is another of those sudden and 
suspicious changes of sentiment. Common report long ago 
attributed to Mr. Webster the sagacity of having seen through the 
humbug of the Colonization scheme, and of having quietly de- 
nounced it, as only a trick of the slaveholders to render their 



* The extent of the Louisiana territory and of Florida are well known. 
Of that lately acquired, the N. Y. Evening Fost says : — * The territories 
acquired from Mexico contain between five and six hundred thousand 
square miles : California has included less than two hundred thousand 
in her designation of boundaries ; so that nearly three hundred and fifty 
thousand (equal to foui'-fifths of the entire area of the non-slavcholding 
States) remain for the application of Air. "Webster's newly discovered 
law of physical geography.' 



4©' 



PIIIT.LIPS EEVIKW or WEESTF.R. 



remaining property more quiet, valuable and secure.* We are 
not aware that he has ever since been seen on its platform, either 
in Washington or elsewhere. But we all live and learn, and the 
last twelvemonth has been harvest time to our statesman. 

'If Yirginia and th3 South seo fit to adopt any proposition to relieve 
themselves from the free people of color among them, or such as may 
be made free, they have ray free consent that the Government shall pay 
them any sum of money out of the proceeds [of the public lands] which 
may be adequate to the purpose.' 

To our fathers' opinion of transporting men across the ocean 
for trial, we have alluded. Mr. Webster proposes to transport 
for life men as much entitled as he to all the privileges of 
American citizens, and whose toil has done as much, in propor- 
tion, as his, -to increase the wealth of their country, and whose 
honest lives have done as much, without any reference \o propor- 
tion, to preserve its virtue, promote its welfare, and increase its 
fame. ' For if (page 33) it were possible for the debates in Con- 
gress to vitiate the principles of the people as much [as its tempta- 
tions have corrupted its members,] I should ciy out, God save the 
republic' There is no fear, though, of any effect upon the public 
from this part of the speech. Before the North so far forgets even 
political economy, not to say justice and Christianity, as to vote 
money to colonize Southern working-men, it will be easy to 
carry a law in the Massachusetts Legislature ' to relieve our- 
selves ' of wanderers from New Hampshire, ' at any expense 
adequate to the purpose.' 

* A correspondent of the Congrcffationalist, July 6, 1849, says, Mr. 
Webster was appointed on a committee, at a public meeting in Boston, in 
1822, to draft a Constitution for the Massachusetts State Colonization 
Society. After considerable discussion in the committee, Mr. Webster 
rose and said : — 

• I must leave. I understand the whole project. It is a schemk op 

THE SLAVEHOLDERS TO nF.T UIO OF THEIR VMV.Y. NEOROES. I WILL HAVE 
-VOTHINO TO DO wnii IT." 



VHILLIFS"' REVIEW OF WEBSTER, 41 

In relation to Mr. Webster's melancholy picture of the terrible 
effects of ' secession,' we take the liberty of telling'him that there 
are sadder sights than that of * spheres and heavenly bodies 
jostling against each other in the realms of space,' ' of a great 
Constitution melting away under the influence of a vernal sun,' 
or even of ' a two-fold war.' Such sights are twenty millions of 
people, professedly Christian and republican, of whom their 
oldest and ablest statesman leaves it as his last word, that ' slavc- 
holding^ slave-breeding and slave-trading, form the whole foun- 
dation of the policy of their government : ' a war like that against 
Mexico to extend the accursed system : a speech like his own, 
volunteering to head the forty thousand underlings of such a 
government in their hunting of fugitive slaves : three millions of 
unhappy men and women compelled to be vile, to live in pro- 
miscuous concubinage, reduced to the level of brutes. ' I looked, 
and there was none to help,' for those mighty intellects which 
God had given as leaders of their age, were either cajoled by the 
promises or awed by the threats of wicked men, prostituting 
their gifts ' to make the worse appear the better reason ; ' grind- 
ing voluntarily and gladly in the mills of the Philistines. Com- 
pared with such scenes, mere common wars are brave and noble 
games. What can be a sadder sight, or a greater evil, than beings 
whom God intended to be great, becoming panders to the lowest 
vices of others ? Nothing, except a nation contented to be led by 
such. Welcome any storm that is necessary to destroy the seeds 
of such a pestilence ! 

He says no word of the Constitutionality of secession. We 
introduce the point merely to assure him that Yankee enterprise 
means to keep abreast of this stirring world, now that precedents 
of Constitutional Law are manufacturing. We intend to try our 
hands at the article. The Louisiana treaty, acquiesced in by the 
people, settled that we may acquire territory. The Florida 
treaty settled that we may relinquish as well as acquire territory. 
The T(>\:is treaty, acquiesced in to some «'xtent, proves wo may 



^ PHILLIPS' REVIEW OF WEBSTER. 

acquire States. When the Massachusetts treaty is made, it will 
show that the Union can relinquish States also. And surely it 
will be a poor return for all our courtesy and acquiescence since 
1803, if the lordly Carolinas will not acquiesce in this pet pro- 
ject of ours ; which indeed has this advantage, that her great 
men, unlike our Websters and Winthrops, will not be forced to 
eat their own words, and lick the dust, when they support it in 
their Congress. 

While on this point, Mr. Webster asks — 

' What is to remain American ? ' In our opinion, that portion 
of the Confederacy which clings to the great American idea of 
' taking the pains to re-enact,' ay, and practise, so plain a law of 
God as that ' all bien are created equal.' 

' What am I [Daniel Webster] to be ? ' That will depend 
upon where you stand ; whether on Plymouth rock, rebuking, at 
no great cost of moral courage, the slave trade ; — ' beneath the 
October sun of the Old Dominion,' pandering to her vices in 
order to elect Mr. Harrison to the Presidency ; — or on the Sen- 
ate floor, ' liberally, kindly, or very weakly out-generalled ' on 
the slave question, in all its shapes. 

' How is each of the thirty States to defend itself?' Massa- 
chusetts has none of that population which Mr. Arnold of Ten- 
nessee describes ' as ready to rise and strike for freedom at the 
first tap of the drum ' — none of that class, of whom Madison 
said, ' that every addition to its number only tends to weaken a 
State, and render it less capable of self-defence, and which is a 
means rather of inviting attack than repelling invasion.' As for 
foreign foes, she points to Lexington and Bunker Hill, where she 
fought alone, and to all the other battle-fields of the Revolution, 
on each of which stood more Massachusetts men than could be 
found there from all the then six Southern States together. 

' Shall we dismember this great country, and astonish Europe 
with an act of folly such as Europe for two centuries has never 
beheld in any gcfvejTimont ? * Is it not pertinent to reply, why 



rillLLirs'' REVIEW OF WEBSTKK. 43 

not as well do so, as to disgust Europe, and outrage the moral 
sense of the world, and retard the hopes of the race, by the sight 
of a republic, ' of which,' as Adams said, ' the preservation, pro- 
pagation and perpetuation of slavery is the vital and animating 
spirit ? ■• — by the sight of a slave voyage, like our own to Mex- 
ico, to extend and re-establish slavery, a crime, ' such as Europe 
for two centuries has never beheld in any government ' ? 

' What is to become of the army and navy ?' We shall at 
least need neither to put down slave insurrections, or conquer 
new fields for slaveholders. 

' What is to become of the public lands ?' They will be/ree, 
beyond the possibility of even Websters and Winthrops to trick 
them into being slave States. 

' Where is the line to be drawn ?' Just there, where men are so 
much ashamed of their sins as to be unwilling to stand before 
the world responsible for setting up a republic on the basis of 
slavery ;— just there, where men, unlike Mr. Webster, love 
Slavery less, and Union with Massachusetts, Ohio and Liberty 

more. 

' Where is the flag of the republic to remain ? Where is the 
eagle still to tower ?' What fustian is all this ! ' Liberty first, 
and Union afterwards,' said Patrick Henry. ' Ubi Libertas, ibi 
patria,'' ('where freedom dwells, there is my country',') was 
Franklin's motto. ' If this breach in the Constitution cannot be 
healed, let Discord reign for ever,' said England's Demosthe- 
nes, Lord Chatham. Beside these, how poor and tame seem 
the idle questions of our Demosthenes ! 

In conclusion, Mr. Webster indulges in a poetic flight as to the 
Union: — 'It is a great, popular, constitutional Government, 
guarded by law and by judicature, and defended by the whole 
affections of the people. No monarchical throne presses these 
States together ; no iron chain of despotic power encircles them ; 
they live and stand upon a Government popular in its form, rep- 
resentative in its character [l.wenty-Jii>c of its RepresentaUr''s 



44 ruiLLirti' review of webstek. 

represent slaves, who never lifted hand to choose them : — of 
half the Senate he addressed, the same jnight he said : — three 
million out of twenty excluded ft^oni all voice i7ithe laws hy which 
they are bought and sold /] — founded upon principles of equal- 
ity, [ three million slaves at the South, and the North has never j 
he himself says, exercised its rightful majority Jive times in the 
whole history of the Governynent — very equal !'[ and calculated, 
we hope, to last for ever. In all its history, it has been benefi- 
cent ; [witness, all Indians, Negroes and Mexicans /] — it has 
trodden down no man's liberty ; — 

[ • How full of weight — how clear, how bold — 
Tlic big round lie, with manly courage told I '] 

it has crushed no State. Its daily respiration is liberty and pa- 
triotism ; [' the PROPAGATION, PRESERVATION and PERPETUATION 

of slavery is the vital and animating spirit of the National Gov- 
eimment ' — J. Q. Adams] — its yet youthful veins are full of 
enterprise, courage, and honorable love of glory and renown ' 
[witness the Mexican war !\ 

And this, then, is the end of the political career of Daniei> 
Webster \ Thirty years ago, he spoke brave words at the Rock 
about that ' work of hell,' the slave trade, and eulogized the ' re- 
ligious character of our origin ' — hoping that he might leave 
to those who should co)Tje after him, ' some proof of his attach- 
ment to the cause of good government, and of civil and religious 
liberty ; some proof of a sincere and ardent desire to promote 
eveiy thing which could enlarge the understandings and improve 
the hearts of men ' ; — and this is the result ! Verily, 

* His promises were, as he then was, mighty ; 
But his performance, as lie is now, nothing.' 









> >.5 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 















3 ^ 



3>; jt> 



006 772 658 3 ^ j^ 



^ ^ 

^ ^ ^ 



g -JO 


















> 3> ^> 

> >;>J>' 



► \W5> :> >3> j> 

► . IS)- 3 >>> ^ 


















Mill 









; ^u>^ V,:,- 



^q»S«? 












